Breaking Job News: AI Work Slop Costs Companies Millions 25% of Jobs Being Transformed By AI

A new Indeed 2025 AI at Work Report reveals a startling truth: one in four jobs posted last year could be highly transformed by artificial intelligence, and more than half face moderate transformation. From prompt engineering to basic math skills, AI is moving faster than anyone expected, and the future of work is being rewritten before our eyes.

But not all transformations are positive. Harvard Business Review warns of rising “AI work slop,” content that appears polished but is actually incorrect. With 40% of U.S. employees reporting that they received subpar AI work in the last month, businesses are paying the price: wasted hours, lost trust, and an estimated $9 million annual cost for a company of 10,000 employees.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Fed’s new labor market indicators show unemployment holding steady at 4.3%, signaling a fragile equilibrium. The big question: Can workers and companies harness AI’s potential without drowning in its flaws?

In this video, host Pete Newsome breaks down:
1. The four AI transformation categories impacting 3,000+ job skills
2. Why hybrid AI-human collaboration may be the future of work
3. How AI errors are costing businesses money AND damaging workplace trust
4. What these trends mean for the job market going into 2025

News Articles:
1. Indeed's AI at Work Report: https://www.hiringlab.org/2025/09/23/ai-at-work-report-2025-how-genai-is-rewiring-the-dna-of-jobs/
2. Harvard Business Review AI-generated "Workslop" is destroying productivity: https://hbr.org/2025/09/ai-generated-workslop-is-destroying-productivity
3. Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators: https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-insights/2025/introducing-chicago-fed-labor-market-indicators

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Episode Transcript

Pete Newsome (00:03):
Today's job market headlines include a warning
from Harvard Business Reviewabout the growing problem that
they call AI work slop, and adebut from the Chicago Fed that
gives us an early look atunemployment before the official
jobs report comes out.
But first, indeed's hiring labreleased its 2025 AI at work
report, where they analyzed2,900 work skills to understand

(00:25):
how exposed they are togenerative AI.
The research grouped the skillsinto four categories Minimal
transformation, which are skillsthat AI has little ability to
change, like patient care andemployee relations.
That's about 40% of the skillsanalyzed.
Assisted transformation, whereAI can provide some support,
like creating templates or doingresearch, but humans are still

(00:47):
very much needed for the corework.
That's 19% of skills.
Hybrid transformation, where AIcan reliably perform pretty
much all the routine work, buthumans will remain essential for
oversight and interpretation ofwhat the AI is doing, and
that's things like proofreading,travel planning, medical coding
another 40% of all skills.

(01:07):
And then full transformation.
Those are highly structured,rules-based skills that AI has
the ability to executeindependently, like basic math
and prompt engineering.
19 of the skills analyzed thisyear fell into that category and
while that's less than 1%, soit doesn't seem like a big
number there were none on thereport last year, so it was zero

(01:30):
.
So we're seeing a big shifttaking place as we speak, and
the findings related to jobpostings were also pretty
eye-opening.
About a quarter of all the jobsposted on Indeed in the past
year could be highly transformedby AI.
Think about that One out offour jobs highly transformed.
That is frightening.
Also, more than half of alljobs currently fall into the

(01:51):
middle ground of what theyconsider moderate transformation
, where the impact will bedetermined by how quickly
employers adopt the tools thatare available and how well the
employees are able to adapt.
Nearly half of all the skillslisted currently on a typical US
job posting falls into hybridtransformation, where, again, ai
can handle much of the work,but humans are still very much

(02:13):
needed, at least for now.
Speaking of, the reportconcludes by saying that what
we're witnessing right now isnot a temporary phase.
It's the structural shift thatunderpins how Gen AI is
beginning to rewire the DNA ofjobs.
Hybrid transformation is not atemporary phase.
It's the structural shift thatunderpins how Gen AI is
beginning to rewire the DNA ofjobs.
Hybrid transformation is not abridge to full transformation.
It is, for many roles, thedestination.
All right.

(02:33):
So when it comes to AI.
I'm not ready to conclude thatanything is final, far from it.
I think we are very much in theearly stages, but undoubtedly
there is a massive shift takingplace place, and it's happening,
whether we like it or not, inthe next headline.
According to harvard businessreview, there's a growing
problem inside workplaces thatare embracing ai.

(02:53):
Employees are cranking out whatresearchers call work slop.
The term refers to ai generatedwork that looks polished on the
surface but is actuallyinaccurate and unhelpful.
We've all seen that before, Ithink.
So here's what's happeningInstead of saving time, the AI
generated content is creatingmore work for those who inherit
it and then have to clean it up,and it's a problem that's

(03:15):
growing because AI adoption isgrowing.
It's doubled in the past twoyears and at this point, pretty
much every company isincorporating more ai into their
processes.
And all that's taking placedespite nobody making any money
yet on it.
95 of organizations are notseeing any measurable return on
ai investment, so this may be areason for that.

(03:39):
According to this survey fromBetterUp Labs and Stanford
Social Media Lab, they foundthat employees are offloading
tasks to AI, but no one'schecking.
There's no oversight.
They're just pushing the badwork product downstream.
So here's what the surveyresults show 40% of US employees
claim to have been therecipient of WorkSlop in the

(04:01):
past month, and around 15% ofall workplace content now
qualifies as such.
Each incident takes around twohours to resolve, which equates
to $186 per employee per month,and at a company of 10,000
workers that translates intomore than $9 million per year in
lost productivity, and thedamage that's being done extends

(04:24):
beyond lost time and money.
53% of employees said receivingwork slop left them annoyed.
No surprise there at all.
Surprise is not higher 42%viewed the sender as less
trustworthy and 30% viewed thesender as less intelligent.
So less trustworthy, lessintelligent.
Nobody wants to be viewed thatway, so consider that before

(04:44):
sending any AI content out.
The article sums it up bysaying low effort, unhelpful, AI
generated work is having asignificant impact on
collaboration.
Yes, makes perfect sense to me.
The robots are here to stay.
We know that at this pointthey're not going away, so let's
figure out how to use them toour benefit, not to our
detriment.

(05:04):
Don't make life worse for yourcolleagues.
They'll thank you for it In thefinal headline today.
This morning, the Chicago Fedintroduced its labor market
indicators, which will combinereal time private sector data
with official labor statisticsto provide a timely and
comprehensive view of labormarket conditions.
So they claim We'll find outover time how reliable it is.

(05:25):
But here are the threeindicators the real-time
unemployment rate forecast,which predicts the official
unemployment rate.
The layoff and separations rate, which measures how many people
are losing or leaving jobs, andthen the hiring rate for
unemployed workers, which trackshow many job seekers are
successfully moving into beingemployed.
So what did today's numbers say?

(05:48):
Well, for September they'reprojecting 4.3% unemployment,
which is the same as August.
Separations are up, but so ishiring.
So those two numbersessentially cancel each other
out.
My takeaway after reading thereport is that it's a whole lot
of nothing happening right nowin the job market.
We're not seeing any changes,we're not seeing any improvement
, we're not seeing anysignificant decline.

(06:10):
It's just flat.
We need to see improvement soon.
More rate cuts probably on thehorizon.
Hopefully that'll help.
So those are the major jobmarket headlines today.
But here's a fun fact before wego In Japan there's actually a
word for dying from too muchwork.
It's called karoshi, or at leastI think that's how it's
pronounced.

(06:30):
It literally means death fromoverwork.
So don't let that happen.
Work is not worth it.
Stay alive out there, everyone,until next time at least.
So thanks for watching.
I really appreciate it.
Please like, subscribe, sharewith anyone who you think might
be interested and, as always, Iwelcome any feedback you have.
So I look forward to talking toyou tomorrow.